The Road Ahead
by quantumsilver
Summary: Chakotay tells himself he's moved on. "Equinox" through "One Small Step".
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I don't own them.

**Notes:** For Libby Kim in the VAMB Secret Summer exchange, who requested: "Hot, steamy J/C story based on the end of Equinox and KJ's lack of apology to Chak and Noah." So here's that, stretched across the beginning half of season six through the episode "One Small Step", in which Chakotay's behavior has always faintly bothered me. It always seemed like there was deep rooted resentment that I never found an explanation for.

Thanks a million to Cheshire for the thousand times reading/editing the many different versions of this. The best, she still is.

_**The Road Ahead**_

* * *

"I'll bring the croutons," she said.

With the tension pulling everyone's insides apart, it had taken me a second. Frankly, I had no idea where we stood. It wasn't inexcusable that I wasn't immediately sure there'd be a deeper meaning. I searched her guarded expression, saw the depths only I would ever see across the rippling surface, and then I understood. Croutons. For my salad. She was going to bring the complementing ingredient to my dish. Symbol. I'd gotten it. I even smiled again, because I don't think it's a stretch to say I'm a half decent man, and my father taught me never to rub things in. It's pointless and cruel. He was never a fan of coping mechanisms employed at the expense of another person, and neither am I.

Even if I was, that was neither the time nor the place for it. The cold look in her eyes that had been haunting me since the moment I'd pulled Noah Lessing out of that cargo bay was nowhere in sight, and I didn't want to do anything that would inspire it to come back again.

There was a color in her face when she told me, more or less, that I'd been right to challenge her.

"The thought had occurred to me." I hadn't realized how heavy the weight of that guilt was until I admitted it. And maybe I missed something key in her reaction because I was so focused on the relief of confession as I told her, "But that would have been crossing the line."

As far as I was concerned, the whole thing was done with those admissions.

She saw it first, hidden in a pile of debris. It was a full second before I had an idea what had caught her eye so sharply, but that she was disturbed by her find registered almost instantly. The pallor of her face suddenly reminded me of weak milk, and I didn't like it. I didn't like seeing her that shaken, and I certainly didn't want the crew seeing it.

I took the plaque in my larger hands, and we put it back up together. Technically, I put it up, but even in the heels, she's a head shorter, and who physically placed it wasn't the point. It was all symbol; the bridge was crawling with it. On symbolic gestures, we would begin rebuilding from the wreckage; so together, we put the plaque back up where it belonged. It was resolved. Over.

We moved on.

She came to the potluck empty-handed. No croutons. The gaping space on the table I'd made sure Neelix left for her bowl went glaringly unfilled, and my stomach dropped for no real good reason. When I finally questioned her on the conspicuous lack of texture in the salad I'd kept simple, expecting her enhancing ingredient, she flushed a pale shade of the roses I sometimes bring her, admitting she'd forgotten all about it. She looked sorry enough, which should have warded off the prickle of...something unpleasant…needling me in my stomach. But we were sandwiched inside a thick crowd of already-tipsy crew members. There was no room for my reaction. Around us, laughter broke out, making any response from me inaudible unless I wanted to yell it over their too-exuberant-to-be-entirely-believable teasing. I couldn't ignore that, forced or not, some of that suffocating tension still hanging over the ship was noticeably thinned. Which immediately put things into perspective.

The croutons weren't the important thing. It was the meaning behind them. She forgot to physically replicate and bring them. So what? It didn't mean she wasn't sorry or wasn't interested in fixing things between us. She just forgot. It happened. People far less busy than she is got wrapped up in other things all the time. And it _was_ funny to see her backpedaling, trying to come up with an excuse for forgetting. Of course the more she tried to explain herself, the more interest it drew, and knowing her, she realized that and used it to lighten the mood even further. It was hard to hold it against her when the crew needed the outlet so desperately. Paris even got in a few old age jokes and lived to repeat them for others' benefit – less accurately with each telling – until B'Elanna slipped the ale out of his hand and I signed to Ashmore behind the oddly-present tiki bar in the corner of Sandrine's that it was about time for the party to transition into synthehol.

I didn't know if I should have been surprised that the Equinox crewmembers were nowhere in sight. I did know that Tuvok knew exactly where they were, wherever that was. I also knew that Noah Lessing's absence was a marked relief to me, and I didn't much like knowing it. It would be a long time before I could unsee the look of fear in his eyes, and I wasn't near ready to chance seeing it again.

We never spoke later. I hung around, waiting, thinking enough time had passed that she might want to, but she only slipped by me with a half-swallowed "good night" before slinking out the doors to retire, unnoticed by the rest of the crew. I watched her go, downing the rest of the real ale I'd been cradling as her outline disappeared into a joining of grey slabs. Setting my glass behind me on the table, I guessed we didn't need to hash anything out that night, anyway – as long as she was okay. She seemed to be. More or less.

It was done. There'd be time to tie up the loose ends later. _Maybe tomorrow_, I thought.

The next days turned over with no regard to any misgivings lingering under the surface in any of us, and I had to put my focus into making sure ship's repairs were progressing according to schedule. I also had to begin assessing our newest crewmembers, ready to face them or not. Marla Gilmore, I felt I had a handle on, but the others I knew little about. Carefully, I began engaging them in conversation whenever I happened by them, making sure they knew what was expected of them and that they would be treated fairly by the rest of the crew, whether they found it easy to make new friends here or not. That would take time, I counseled the two who gave any indication of caring how they were perceived by the Voyager crew. The other two, I only watched, giving them their space and time to reflect. _For now_, I told myself.

They featured in my dreams. All five of them made appearances, but Lessing was the worst. Noah's huge, dark eyes, limpid with paralyzing terror. Always looming over me. Sometimes I was running alongside him from the unseen, snarling beast chasing behind us, and sometimes, I was the one hunting him. I liked those dreams least of all. Waking from them guaranteed a morning without breakfast, until the vivid imagery faded, the shaking subsided, and I could chance eating. But I kept at it. I didn't let the nightmares or my insane insecurities keep me from my duties.

I never saw her there, down on the lower decks where she'd shut the fallen five away. She never asked about them, never acknowledged reference to them in my many daily reports. Not once since the Equinox Five had joined Voyager did I hear mention of her going near that section of the ship. At first, I assumed she'd handled it early on, and that I'd missed it. But something in her affect, something avoidant she was giving off settled into me, and I started to wonder. Had she? How could she not have? The Kathryn I knew wouldn't be able to live with that kind of unresolved tension. Could she?

It didn't take long for the questions to multiply. Had she ever really moved on? Or was she still stuck in that moment we were doing our best to run away from and sweep under the carpets I spent weeks cleaning after the incident that started this?

Before I realized it, I found myself avoiding looking into her eyes, and I couldn't acknowledge that it was because I was afraid I'd see that look in it again: the one that showed nothing but contempt for what she saw when she looked at me. Contempt, and a twinge of hatred. But I was being irrational. Lack of sleep, overwork. The usual. My growing fears were groundless paranoia for all I knew, but that didn't mean I could shake them off so easily.

And then one day, I worked up the courage to ask Lessing in passing if he'd seen the captain lately. The man has expressive eyes, I'd noted only in that moment; the look on Noah's face was answer enough.

No, I realized slowly, a sinking sensation deep in my gut with that certain suspicion confirmed. Of course not. Why would she condescend to speak to him again? She'd only almost killed him.

_Maybe she needs more time._ _Probably, that's all it is_, I told myself uneasily.

She just needed time.

We didn't end up with overlapping bridge shifts for a while. Tuvok requesting a few weeks of lighter bridge duty to implement security training with his teams left fewer command members available to cover a twenty-four hour shift. But in the gaps in my duties, between the changing shifts I eventually puzzled together, I watched her closely as she sailed across the bridge to her chair, or back to her ready room, searching for the signs that there were heavier things on her mind. I found none. Her expressions were smooth as finely-blown glass. Nothing in her words or demeanor hinted at any internal conflict. She made direct eye contact with anyone who spoke to her, whenever she had to, absolute confidence in her dealings with all of us.

The deckplates under my boots stopped feeling so solid without my noticing it. I still couldn't unsee the look in Noah Lessing's eyes, no matter how many times I forced myself to look at them. I avoided looking in Kathryn's.

I wished I could avoid the morphing nightmares. That proved more difficult. A few days would pass without an episode, until I thought I was past it, and then one would hit and I woke shaking in cold sweats.

We dealt with Seven's miniature collective showing up. Partly because it's my job, and partly because I know Seven is important to Kathryn, I devoted time counseling her through the jarring revelation that she was the one who'd caused the abnormal link between the three former drones. And I found myself surprised as I sat with her, at just how much she was growing. There are times when individual crewmembers get lost in the sea of the whole, swept away in a never-ending torrent of duty rosters, replicator rations and petty gripes. It struck me only in that moment how Seven might have been one of those individuals on my end. I couldn't find more than a twinge of fault in myself for that. Usually, Kathryn and the doctor handled her.

I had to admit she seemed to be grateful for our talk, although I couldn't help wondering where exactly Kathryn was during all of this. Checking into her schedule showed her tied up in one trade proposal after another while we hosted dozens of alien species aboard ship, but she could just as easily have delegated some of that responsibility to me. I dropped by the ready room after my talk with Seven, filling Kathryn in on the situation while she only twice glanced up from the stack of reports she was perusing. When I offered a downplayed version about my role as advisor in passing, she did stop, confirming she'd actually heard at least every fifth word out of my mouth. My reward was a slow, soft smile, and it was suddenly all I needed. I work for peanuts, but then, I always have.

But that's not exactly fair. We all did, including her. And there was nothing wrong between us, that smile showed. Nothing worth mentioning.

We were slapped up against B'Elanna's journey to the Barge of the Dead. That one had more than one member of the crew worried. Kathryn stepped in and took charge once it had gotten serious –and with good reason. Emotionally, B'Elanna has been through hell in the past year, and seeing the circles under her eyes again had been… It was bad for all of us. She's okay, though. That's what matters.

It was inconsequential that I was the one to push for letting B'Elanna follow her newfound spirituality, hoping it would lead her to some semblance of inner peace. Kathryn didn't see it that way at first. Not by a long shot. When push came to shove, it suddenly hadn't seemed important that Kathryn herself had been dead set against it; she was the one standing there when B'Elanna woke up, after all. I think it was a bonding moment for them, and that was a long time in coming. Considering the ends, it was okay that Kathryn was the benevolent leader who'd finally relented and "allowed" her chief engineer to undergo the dangerous experience. It didn't matter how I felt, deep down, about how far the captain's authority in the matter had extended to begin with.

I never did get to continue that discussion with Kathryn. Before we had time to take much more than a breath, the doctor's malfunctioning daydreams threw us into a hierarchical mess with a threat we hadn't even detected stalking us on the periphery. Fortunately, the doctor's quick wit saved us in the end. I have to smile and duck my head, remembering Tuvok's disbelief when I nodded ascent for the "activation sequence". I have a feeling a certain photonic canon made a starring role in more than one log that night. She mentioned something in passing about wanting to make a point of looking into his ECH prototype and I made a note to put someone on it eventually.

Between the two of us, things were cordial but just…off. Not quite right. Before that stretch, I couldn't remember the last time that hearing her walk onto the bridge behind me hadn't lightened any mood I was in. By then, it was doing the opposite. I could feel my shoulders tightening at the scent of her herbal shampoo coming into range, even before she'd stride so deliberately into the center of the room, her hand caressing the railing with absolute ownership of the command center and everything and anyone in it.

By then I couldn't deny that I was harboring a few misgivings about recent history, and I wondered if we should talk about _it_, just to smooth over any rough edges that might be gathering dust in the jagged threads. I'd almost worked up the courage to pull her aside and suggest a long overdue, quiet working dinner and then…

Who else but Tom Paris? The ship from hell had taken over his brain: what little of it I was convinced existed sometimes.

The galling part of the entire experience was how much Tom's odd behavior had rankled me. There's no denying there are parts of me that have warmed to the man he's become, or that those parts are buried less deep than I'd like. But there are moments, despite how far we've come, that I wonder if Paris would have anything left in him if you took away his drive to pilot and to chase women. That ship had had his number, all right. Tom is Kathryn's personal reclamation project, even if she'd been studiously ignoring that fact lately, and so his odd behavior had to be tracked and dealt with, taken seriously. Not seriously enough to reprimand him for his inappropriate behavior of course – that only happens when he stands up for something he believes in. Just seriously enough to warrant a few brain scans if he kept it up. I remember thinking I may never understand Kathryn's criteria for meting out consequences for inappropriate actions, but I saw something was off with Tom before she did. Not quite soon enough, because we almost lost him to that sentient ship. I don't want to imagine what Kathryn's reaction would have been if that had happened and if any oversight on my part had let Tom Paris slip through the cracks. We saved him, barely, only to lose…

Tuvok. The one she hadn't confined to quarters. If I had been meaning to find some way to broach Equinox to her, or more recent issues, that sure as hell wasn't the time. The only moments I saw her fully focused on anything while Tuvok's brain was half-scrambled was in the heat of a crisis on the bridge. That's how much the Vulcan means to her. Still, we were fine. Nothing was interfering with our working relationship. It was weeks before we had a way to restore Tuvok. I went personally to the conference room to inform her when the procedure was over.

She stepped outside, wearing the lack of quality sleep in her tightened shoulders and under her eyes. When she locked her searching blue eyes on my face, she spoke one terse word:

"Tuvok?"

I wasn't jealous of the emotion in her voice, or of the fact that her entire focus was in that one name. Even if I had been, the underlying tremor in the question betrayed a vulnerability that made me stop and really look at her. It was Kathryn. The one I'd known for five plus years. It was her and she was afraid for someone she cared about.

In that still-shot moment, I would have had to have been a much worse man than my father raised me to be not to quickly assure her, "Back to his old self. Perfectly logical and 'unable to understand' why half the ship is trying to get in to see him."

I do an awful Tuvok impression, but it usually at least warrants a smile. The one I got was shallow, too full of relief to lift the corners of her mouth by much. I saw the hesitation, the dart of her eyes back to the closed conference room door, and I knew what she wanted to say – what she wouldn't ask. All of which could only mean that we were going to be fine if I could still read her that well, I decided. The smallest of smiles came easily, for me.

"I'll stall the Kesat delegates," I said, so she didn't have to ask.

The Kesat were less than thrilled that we'd purged the ability to detect the elusive Ba'Neth from our computers. Offering to step in for her and absorb the heated clamoring of the visiting Kesat officials was no small favor, but it was the least I would do for her.

Her brows knitting almost together in the middle of her forehead, she turned damned near pleading eyes to me. "I only need ten minutes."

"An engineering issue requires your attention. You'll be back shortly." If it wasn't the most natural enthusiasm I'd ever mustered, I assumed I could be forgiven for that.

The grin that lights an entire starship relieved an unspoken burden from my shoulders. Warmth spread from her skin into the cloth over my arm as she squeezed my bicep and murmured a sincere, "Thank you. I'll be right back."

Peanuts. I do work for them. But there was new heat spreading through every cell in my body at her expressive gratitude, and it was a relieving sensation.

She brushed by me in the corridor, her shoulder skimming my chest, and I froze stiff, that budding warmth squeezed out of my body in one hideous instant. Because I was thrown back outside that cargo bay, my heart pounding, trying to claw its way out of my chest.

She didn't notice.

I swallowed hard, watching her go. Having no idea why it was so grating, this many weeks later, I shook it off and pulled myself forcefully back into the present. With a throat so dry it hurt, I stepped into the conference room with a hollow diplomatic smile, putting it out of my mind. Because we were all right. We were always all right, no matter what one of us ever did to the other. We were both good people, Starfleet officers – I didn't still flinch to think of myself that way – and at the end of the day, we were dedicated to the same cause. If the road ahead of us looked foggier than it ever had before, that was only because no man could know the future. It was hard to hold up in perfect hope when we almost lost people to the harshness of this alien quadrant on a semi-daily basis.

Any rift between us was temporary, no one was holding any childish grudges, and we were fine. We truly were. We would have been.

Until I dreamed that she came to me and apologized. The only real problem with that, I'm convinced looking back on it, was that it felt. So. Real.

She appeared in my bedroom – which should have been the first hint, come to think of it – draped in satiny blue. Hair soft and waving and long, she desperately apologized for discarding me like used reclamator waste. Her hands washing over my bare chest like silk, she thanked me profusely for standing behind her all these years that we've weathered the threat of death and destruction at every turn together, promising that she would never scare me so badly by crossing that line again, and I believed her. She openly confessed how much she really did need me, want me by her side, and I believed that too, even if it was so entirely out of character for her that it would have been laughable in waking moments.

I believed it, damn it. I believed it, I believed her, and I woke up sweaty and disturbed in ways she hadn't been able to do to me in a damned long time. I'm still disgusted about being unable to get back to sleep without finishing off what a cold shower had barely lessened by half. I have no idea what to do with the fact that the image of her on her knees in front of me, my fist tangled in her long, waving hair is what…

Spirits of my ancestors, it was ridiculous, the sideshow that dream would have been if it had actually happened. If there was even a kernel of the Kathryn I've been living with all these years in the fabricated dream version that had draped herself all over me like a needy blanket, it was buried so deep that my fantasy hadn't bothered to include it.

Rationally, I understand the difference between what my subconscious creation felt I was owed and what I really am owed. At first it's not difficult to hold those things separate. I spend no time wondering why just looking at her on the bridge and thinking of this dream woman shoots laser anger through my insides; it's enough to know that it's an entirely irrational reaction to be able to dismiss it. Kathryn's no telepath. She can't beam images or thoughts into my mind. I'm sure the doctor would've mentioned that little anomaly at some point over the past few years if she could. Mostly sure. Fairly sure.

Reasonably certain.

The dream was not her fault, and I know that in my waking moments.

The images won't fade, and neither does the dream. I have it the next night. It skips a night, and then it's back the next. And the next. Over and over again, she comes to my bed, waking me from a dream within a dream, apologizing, touching, stroking, doing more, until it bleeds into bleary-eyed waking moments, until I grow just a hair less secure about what's real between us and what's not. Her, brushing past my chest, midnight eyes burning contempt for some imaginary weakness of humanity in me, and her, sorry for straying so far out of character and sinking into the opposite extreme, stroking my chest, sliding to her knees beside my bed, hair tousled and tangling in my curling fingers …

My first instincts are to try and purge the fantasy from my obviously overactive libido. It's possible that's a fundamental mistake I didn't foresee. Because unlike most sexual fantasies, the more I give into it, the worse it gets. The more I release the need while locked in the holodeck, pretending to box, or shut in the shower with a hand that's getting as much practice as it had when I was a gangly, horny teenager, the more pervasive it becomes. Before I have time to see it, the inane fantasy takes root in my reality. I never fully realize it's choking out an external world growing smaller with every passing day.

A man can only take so much persistent torture when it bleeds over into his disjointed dreams. It's as if I blinked for some sticking instant in time, and now alien thoughts are haunting me, hunting me at every turn around every half-empty corridor she's walking down. It's not right, these dreams tell me. Not just the version of her in my dreams, but her, in the waking world. She's not right. She's changed. She crossed a line that can't be uncrossed, and if she can't see it, and try to undo it, she might do it again at any time. She might keep doing it. I may never get her back.

It's nothing less than absurd that months later, I still feel her, brushing by me in that corridor outside the cargo bay. I can't exactly blame her for this. But I shouldn't still be seeing her blue eyes burning midnight with disgust. It's at odds with the competing fantasy: her, inside my quarters, trailing her hands down my chest as she slides so slowly down my body.

It _is_ her fault that I still have to work to look Noah Lessing in the eye, that his eyes haunt me whenever hers aren't.

I realize it might be easier to shake all of this if I could talk to someone about my concerns, maybe especially the dreams that are unearthing them, but who am I supposed to go to about this? B'Elanna? The doctor? I'd lose something breakable or end up as one of the doctor's test subjects. Better yet, Tuvok? Alone in my office, I laugh tersely, imagining the look on the Vulcan's normally expressionless face. Any veiled story I told to conceal the object of my distress would be seen through in a warp core pulse. It's not an option.

My spirit guide is absolutely silent. She seems to think this is something I need to work through on my own, and I resent that, too.

If I had the benefit of a talkative guide, it wouldn't be so bad. To be honest, I never had much luck with her until I came to Voyager. In trying to introduce B'Elanna to her guide, I'd been hoping to jump start my weak connection with mine. At that point, all I knew of my guide was that she existed, and I knew what form she preferred from seeing her loping around in the distance in my dreams. Yet I had no relationship with the wandering spirit I wanted to learn to rely on, as my father had relied on his. All I'd netted from that B'Elanna experience was an angry outburst from B'Elanna (is there any other kind?) and a sputter of connection with my guide that fizzled to the frustration of silence.

Voyager, for some reason, was different. After trying again with Kathryn, my relationship with my spirit guide blossomed, and that connection has sustained me for five years now – only to fall short again in recent months. I miss the benefit of her calming lupine influence, but the hazy connection between my spirituality and my relationship with Kathryn doesn't help me sort out anything in this mess, and I don't really want to think about it. Instead, it becomes one more thing to brood about.

I try to distract myself by watching B'Elanna, Tuvok, the doctor and Seven. Making sure they're all right, and keeping tabs on the integrating Equinox crew becomes my priority. It works, to an extent. I think it works. It's just the damned dreams that are driving me crazy – as crazy, I'm starting to fear, as my grandfather was. Working side by side with Kathryn when I can barely look at her without remembering her dream double is hard. And fighting the irrational anger at her for a dream I make damned sure she doesn't even suspect I'm having about her is _hard_. It doesn't help that the simple olive branch she's owed Lessing for months now seems to be nowhere in her list of priorities to extend. I watch him roaming the decks with those expressive dark eyes of his, only connected to the people he has to work with by the block of blue color on his uniform. The Five sit alone or together in the messhall, with only the likes of Tom Paris or Meghan Delaney, who has a good heart, trying to engage them in conversation. Even they can't work miracles, and the Five know exactly where they stand. The fact that their past actions arguably makes their isolation earned and that they seem to accept that – somehow, that only makes it worse.

She could do more to help them integrate. It wouldn't kill her to stop by and show she knows they're there, at the very least. No one has to sing their praises or invite them to any private holodeck romps in Tahoe just yet. No one's asking the captain to invite them to dinner or to select them as officer of the month. But maybe the apology Lessing is owed would start the healing within himself and let him start building connections to the Voyager crew. Because if they can't integrate eventually, it's going to undermine everything Kathryn and I have worked to build together on this ship. And yet, to look at her, she's oblivious to all of it. I'm not even sure I can say she cares anymore.

The days tick by with agonizing speed and incredible slowness. Kathryn never approaches the lower decks, and she comes nowhere near my quarters. And when I realize I'm spending my evenings half waiting to see if she'll condescend to visit the bowels of her own ship or waiting for her chime at my door, that I can't sleep right because I'm expecting some fantasy image of her that's never coming, I've had just about enough of this. All of it.

I head to her quarters to confront her about things she needs to be confronted on – namely Noah Lessing – and the ship jolts and bucks like a prized stallion beneath me. The deck decides it wants to be at my knees instead of at my feet, I'm launched into the nearby bulkhead, nearly miss breaking my left arm, and we're both called to the bridge because, apparently, we've been sucked into a strange corridor of subspace.

The Vaaduar. I spend the next weeks dealing with them as we're all almost killed for the thousandth time in this spirit-forsaken quadrant. When it's over, we've lost the ability to use the corridors that could have brought us so much closer to home so quickly. While I watch on screen, a fleet of Vaaduar ships escape into the inky blankness of space, and the unsettled coil of my intestines gains another permanent kink.

Noah Lessing's expressive eyes haunt me. At times, I can almost see the fear in them, the way I could when I went back for him that day. Where else I've seen that look, I can't quite pinpoint, but dark things stir in me when I think about it – even darker than those that are growing in my dreams, and I avoid thinking about it wherever possible. And I've lost the will to approach Kathryn. She seems too wrapped up in ship's business lately, taken with some project she and B'Elanna are working on in their spare time. From glances at the calculations on her screen as she passes me on the bridge with various PADDs in hand, it's some radical way to boost our engine efficiency, but neither woman is giving out any details before they have an idea that they can make it work. It eats up every spare second of their time, leaving even Tom out in the cold until they either make a breakthrough or set the idea aside. Speaking of Tom lately, I spy him in the halls late at night, roaming around in search of Harry or someone else to shoot a game of pool or play savior of the universe, and he looks okay, considering. That at least is a faint relief.

I rarely spot Kathryn. She never comes to my quarters for dinner, or anything else. Except at night, when I let myself get exhausted enough to fall into REM sleep. Then she clings to me, I wake sweaty and shaking and the anger has settled into me a long time ago.

It's been a long time since I've known an anger this deep. Not knowing why it's there only leads me to deny it.

It only seems to get worse when I do catch a fleeting glimpse of her. She smiles placidly at me on the bridge, entirely ignorant of the separate life of resentment her image has been seeding. Seemingly ignorant of how much she's changed, and how those changes aren't for the better.

Lately when I look at her, trying to see past the jumble of images writhing together in my mind, I begin to wonder if I'm so sure of where Voyager is heading after all. I can't say with any conviction whether any of this is worth it, or if we're all deluding ourselves out here, thinking we'll make it back home and not have to pay a price that is too horrific to bear. The dreams, thank the sky spirits, start to fade out for a few days. With them goes something else I can't quite pinpoint, some will to fight against apathy until–

We discover the graviton ellipse. Somehow in hell, we've discovered that the Ares Four is in that thing. For the first time in a long time, I'm passionate about something going on around me. But while I'm pontificating to Seven in the shuttle, I'm paying far less attention to my words than I should be. It's possible I'm not really hearing myself while talking so casually about how much I've sacrificed out here to assume the role of first officer – and I have, whether I walk around complaining about it or not. I probably miss the raised ocular implant shooting sidelong glances at me, and I can't say I'd care if I caught them.

This. This is what I want to be doing. Making a difference. Making history. Or at the very least, spending quality time studying a rare piece of it.

I go through the motions of protocol, engrossed in this unprecedented opportunity to connect with a link from our human past. Reveling isn't too strong a word to apply to exploring artifacts no living being has seen in centuries. It's refreshing that my mind isn't on _her_ for once. Hell, it's liberating. Out here in this eerily glowing expanse that is the inside of the ellipse, I'm my own commander and she's not filling space in my head. I answer to myself; my will is the only one that matters. I'm free to do and say and believe whatever the hell I want. I'll even admit to some level of glee when I realize bringing this module back to Voyager will give me something to focus on, something besides her, for months to come.

I see an end to this. This module could be my salvation, in more ways than one.

And then she orders me to leave the module behind. Kathryn orders me to drop the Ares Four and to clear the ellipse's pull before the dark matter asteroid hits and, inside my strained bones and tissues, something intangible gives. The blackest cloud of determination settles over me, sucking the last obedient molecules of out of my body in a upswept wind funnel of fury.

_No_. _She's not taking this away from me, from all of us. I won't let her. _Paris's sidelong glances of reproach don't come close to stopping me from repeating the order to hold on to that module. It won't stop me believing I can pull this off despite their pessimism. Deep within, I know that I can do this, and after years of devoting myself to Voyager and its crew, frankly, I think I'm owed nothing less than the opportunity to try.

It blows up in my face – and the damnable part of it all is that I wake up feeling guilty to a petulant former drone I hadn't wanted on board to begin with but one I'm starting to like in spite of myself. And I'm wrong, as Seven tells me, bluntly and repeatedly. She's been hanging out with Kathryn, all right. Somehow, I'm the one who's wrong. Always. It's like one of those absurd mono-chromatic comedies Tom's always watching on that stupid television of his.

We make it back in one piece. I miss the funeral service, but Seven says a few touching words and her experience is enough to distract Kathryn, I guess, because despite the smooth patch of space we've hit, she still doesn't find the time to check in on the Equinox crew or to speak with Noah Lessing. While I recover from my injuries in Sickbay with limited computer access, this is what sticks with me.

Is it so out of the realm of reality for her to just say she's sorry? I'm past expecting an apology for myself, especially after what I just did back in the ellipse. She'll hold that over my head for months. But Noah Lessing? Doesn't she owe him at least that much, considering she'd tried to kill the man? How does she expect him to move on or try and blend himself into her crew until she shows him that her behavior was an aberration of character and not the norm?

I feel twisted and pulled in so many directions. Watching the quiet Equinox Five struggle to find a place among a crew that still resents them, myself included, though it's part of my job not to show it. Hearing Seven, seeing Kathryn. Dreaming that she's apologizing and watching her walk around, perfectly entitled to do the opposite and continue to act like nothing ever happened. Seeing her eyes boring into me as if I'm the one who's wrong as she brushes against my chest, sliding past me, walking away from me outside of Sickbay, and I.

Break.


	2. Chapter 2

If she's surprised to see me so late at night, she masks it quickly. Her quarters are dim as she invites me into them. Judging by the soft jazz she orders paused, the jacket along the back of the reading chair and the open book on the table, she was enjoying a few minutes of downtime before turning in for the night. It might make her more receptive to this confrontation than she'd normally be, or it may not.

It's happening in spite of her preference. I've let her put it off far too long.

We go through the motions of her asking if I'd like anything and me declining. Finally, she seats herself in her reading chair, motioning for me to settle on the couch opposite. I watch from my haze of admitted fixation as one bare-footed leg slides silkily over the other, a smooth motion belying utter comfort with surroundings that belong to her.

"If you're here about what happened on the shuttle," she opens casually, "you should know that I've decided–"

"I'm not." I save her the trouble of finishing that thought. The notion that she expected me to come here and apologize to her is faintly galling, but I keep focus, despite the fact that, right now, I can't give much of a damn what she's decided or hasn't about my recent actions.

"I see." She doesn't, or she wouldn't dare look so smug and contemplative, so sure of herself with that half cat-like smile as she prompts, "Then what's on your mind, Commander?"

Funny she should ask.

Unblinking, I tell her, in just a few words, what has me here. I say nothing of myself, of the two of us as a functioning unit, keeping it confined to Lessing alone. That's the most important thing. I state my case for having to insist that she apologize to Noah, sooner rather than later. Then I wait in silence for her to stare at me, a full minute slinking by while she considers my words. Eventually, she uncurls herself from the overlarge chair, places her shoe-less feet flat on the floor and sets her coffee mug down on the table between us. It makes a sharp click. In the softening echo, she sits back, still staring. And then:

"Have you lost your mind."

"Excuse me?" I can't have heard her correctly.

"I asked if you've lost your mind, Chakotay."

Or maybe I heard her more clearly than I'd wanted to.

If it was said in the tone of a question, as if there was the possibility that I have a point, the conversation might have been salvageable. It's the sheer frosted calm that gets me. It's the unaffected arrogance of her disbelief that's digging into me: a thorn in the bottom of my foot that keeps stabbing into inflamed, irritated tissues with every forward step I try to take with her.

"It's a legitimate request," I bite off, only just softening the too-sharp edges of every syllable my tongue is slicing through.

She shakes her head slowly, still staring at me I'm going to break out into a grotesque grin any second now and tell her Tom Paris paid me to say it. When I do neither, she leans forward again, reaches out for the coffee she'd only just set aside, leaning back and sipping at it again with infuriating deliberation. I'm left to endure the raking scrutiny of her consideration while she considers my presence, and how to handle it. Finally she says flatly, "I don't get it. Why now? It's been months. I thought we moved past this."

_So did I_, I almost say but catch himself. I don't let myself be fazed by false hurt she uses to justify her open irritation. It's an elegant attempt at side-stepping my point, but ignoring this hasn't worked out for anyone so far, and there's no reason to expect it to work now.

Calmly, so excruciatingly quietly, I ask, "Can you really sit here and tell me you don't owe him one?"

Her hackles are raised more than just a hair by my insistence; the arch of her neck alone says I've hit a major nerve. "A Starfleet officer who'd been hunting and killing innocent life forms?" she demands. "One who was given the opportunity to cooperate more than once, and who showed not even a hint of remorse for his murderous actions?"

Incredulity laces every tart syllable, enunciates each phrase, and I reject it all.

"A sentient being," I bear down on the truth with steady certainty, "no matter how misguided, that you almost killed."

She, being Kathryn, has the audacity to look openly hurt. When I don't blink or budge from my position, she's far past irritated as she snaps, "Is this what you came here for? To dig up accusations about something that happened five _months_ ago?"

It almost stops me. Has it been that long?

"No," I maintain stonily, shaking off my surprise. "I came to have a serious discussion about what happened five months ago. And I thought you were a big enough woman to be able to admit that what happened in that cargo bay was wrong."

"I thought I had," she returns in a dismissive drawl at sharp odds with the steel in her gaze.

I take a breath, exhaling the resentment that would let her pull me off course, and I never look away from her – no matter how much I want to. "The bottom line is that you owe Crewman Lessing an apology, and I'm surprised it's taken you so long to give him one."

_There it is. Right there. _That flash of deeper emotion I've been pushing for before the calm descends over her features, masking its presence. But I did see it. I'm getting to her, steadily making my way under her skin. It's exactly what I want from her. The single twitch under her right eye warns me of what's to come if I want to stay this course with her, or would warn me, if I was objective enough to be thinking entirely rationally.

The air around us chills to frigid levels. Kathryn stands, a slow, incremental motion that ends with her spine locking stiffly into place.

"All right," she seems to allow slowly, her right hand rubbing at unseen tension in the back of her neck before dropping to her hip. It's an offensive posture I know well: a posture meant to portray a deceptively defensive position as she says, "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're right. Let's assume that he didn't break, and that I intended to let those aliens kill him in that cargo bay."

I am right. She absolutely knows it too. Even if she wasn't the one who saw the fear in Lessings' eyes the way I did. But I wait for her to finish.

"What exactly do you propose I say that would make a damned bit of difference to him now?"

What? I almost make the novice misstep of asking it out loud. What does she say? What does it matter? I haven't given any thought to the wording. It's not my apology, and it's not supposed to be. But since she's going to make this as difficult as she can, I do the best I can on short notice. "For one thing, that you're sorry? For almost letting those creatures kill him?" I suggest.

Her mouth works as if she's considering that I have a point. "I could do that."

I nod caustic thanks. That was all I needed her to acknow–

"But I'm asking you what good it would do."

It almost freezes me, because I wasn't expecting it. But I don't let it throw me; I'll be damned if I let her throw me off that easily.

"It might reassure him that you're not going to try it again the moment you don't agree with his actions," I reach for and find with a bit of effort.

A slow nod, and I can physically hear a crick in her neck before, "I see." She circles around the coffee table to approach me slowly, making me crane my own neck up to watch her full-length movements. She stops in front of me, very close. Her perfumed bath oils invade my nostrils, the hint of coffee on her breath wafting down to me as she asks, "And are we talking about him now? Or you?"

My body hardens painfully, and it shouldn't. I'm no green novice at this, and I should have expected her deflective tactics. It's classic Kathryn, almost textbook her. I know better than to take the words she's twisted from my own mouth and let them distract me in some mutilated form. I refuse to let her to do that, and I vehemently rejects the power play of her standing over me while I sit, looking up at her.

I stand, matching her squared posture and knowing she hates the reminder of how short she is without thirty centimeters of heel or a ledge to stand on – like the one so conveniently located in her ready room.

"Lessing," I say pointedly. "We're talking about Noah Lessing, and if you ask me, it's past time we did."

"Fine," she spits out in open irritation. Her neck is the one to crane upward now. "Talk – I'm listening."

In any other mood, I'd laugh out loud. Famous last words. Better men than I am have failed to notice the calculated length of rope she dangles in front of me, inviting me to wrap around my own neck and be hung by.

Those men weren't as _right_ as I am. None of them had the stake in her character that I do. Not one of them had a physical need to force her to confront what she'd come so close to becoming five months ago. What a part of me I didn't even realize is still terrified she might become, if we don't deal with this.

"You would never have done that to an alien," I find myself saying. "If he'd been anything other than human, you wouldn't have taken his actions personally enough to compromise your own humanity. You need to address that, if not for yourself then at least for this crew."

She scoffs disbelievingly. Mutters something unintelligible as she turns away from me again. Oh, no she doesn't.

"I didn't hear you."

Her head turns back to me with slow deliberation, her glittering eyes burning almost midnight blue in darkness of shadow. "I said," she painstakingly repeats, "that's where you're wrong."

I blink rapidly, unsure of where she's heading with that. "Meaning?"

"Meaning, if he'd been an alien, I'd have treated him the same way."

Chills wrack my stiff body. "And you see nothing wrong with that?" How can she not?

She shrugs. "There's plenty wrong with it. What I did in that cargo bay was wrong."

I release a breath I didn't notice holding. "That's a relief to hear. Because I was starting to question whether or not you even –"

"But I did not do it because Noah Lessing was human or because he or Rudy Ransom had disappointed me."

Somehow, she's done it again. This was my confrontation, my idea, and suddenly, it's like I'm taking some critical test I haven't studied for. The explanation I've clung to so furiously, using to try and explain her unforgivable actions is being denied, and yet I see no viable explanation hanging within my grasp that could possibly replace it.

If not for the reputation of humanity, or Starfleet…?

"Then why?" I have to ask simply. "Why did you do it? What was it that pushed you over the edge and turned you into some woman that I barely recognized?"

"You're not being fair. I didn't initiate the confrontation with the Equinox."

My head shakes. "No one's saying that you did."

"But you're not taking it into account, either. It was their actions that determined mine. The crew of the Equinox showed their true colors the moment we found the research from their disgusting little experiments. They'd proven they were warped enough to torture and kill sentient life forms just to get home a little faster. I did what I did because they confirmed it by throwing this crew to the wolves they themselves had created without so much as a second thought – I did it because I knew then they had to be stopped at any cost." She leaves me to consider that as she steps around the dining table, moving coolly to the replicator to refill her cup, both unblinking and unflinching. "Lessing had the tactical information I required in order to stop them, and he was refusing to share that information. I was prepared to acquire it from him at any cost. That's the bottom line."

"There you go again with the absolutes," I can't help sticking on because it's a recurring theme on this ship and I seem to be among the only people who have noticed it.

Why is it always about absolutes with her? All or nothing. Complete agreement or disloyalty. With her or against her.Yet when it comes to her own actions, in something as black and white as life and death, she seems unable to see herself standing on the wrong side of the lines she's always drawing for the rest of us.

"Listen to yourself," I'm outright begging her now, frantically holding to the single thread of reason she's left me to cling to. "'At any cost.' You endangered this crew, your own crew, trying to stop them. Weren't the lives of _our_ people worth considering?"

"Absolutely," she nods emphatic agreement, approaching me with her newly-replicated drink, "and I considered it." She takes the smallest sip, and I see the droplets of moisture along her nose from the condensing steam before it evaporates. She lowers her mug, and the air around us goes still and silent as a summer night before a pounding rain. "But in the end, I'd never allow any species to subjugate or destroy another race for personal gain. The members of this crew, of all people, should know that about me by now." She stops very close to me, cradling the mug against her chest, a solid object held between us. "You, of all people, should know that about me by now."

It hits like a plasma storm discharge. Because she has a point there. A good one.

Once, I'd taken up arms to stop a violent race of creatures from doing the same to other people. And during that time, I did far worse things than she did in that room. She knows it. She's told me how thick the intelligence file is that documents my actions.

But her point goes deeper.

Once, I'd defended her for firing on an alien space station to stop a similar race of thugs from decimating another innocent species, even at the cost of stranding my own crew seventy thousand light years away from home alongside hers. It isn't entirely lost on me, but I can't afford to get lost in imperfect comparisons, either. And they are imperfect.

She'd asked me to join her, despite my past and despite having stranded us here, and she'd done it with one nonnegotiable condition – that I adhere to the sometimes cowering, clean hands policy Starfleet holds so dear. The policy I'd thrown into the dirt along with the cold round pips that symbolized my commitment to peace between species in the Alpha Quadrant and my agreement to treat the life of any one sentient being as equal to any other.

What she'd done in that cargo bay flew in the face of everything she's asked me to embrace for her, and it can't be allowed to slide past us, unaddressed. Not today.

Not anymore.

I find myself swallowing thickly, licking dry lips and standing my ground, in part because I have no choice. "None of that excuses the actions you took against Noah Lessing in that cargo bay. You were going to kill him, Kathryn. That's against everything Starfleet stands for, and you know it."

There's a ripple of ire at the direct shot I aimed straight to her heart, but her features settle into an eerie calm far too quickly. "I was going to let the aliens kill him," she smoothly corrects, as if there's a distinction there that matters in any moral universe at all, "_if_ it came to that."

Even her features seem unfamiliar as I scan the planes of her face against the shadows of the dim lighting in her quarters. "I'm sorry, but I can't accept that." My head shakes back and forth on stiff shoulders, trying to fathom what's happened to her. "This isn't you, Kathryn. I don't who you are, but it's not the woman I've known for the past five years."

"No, Chakotay." She sets the coffee down on the table, shedding the symbolic physical barrier between us in a downright dangerous sign of aggression before arching upright to study me. What she finds, inexplicably, seems to sadden her. With a flash of pained pity crossing her features, she says softly, "It's not the woman you _think_ you've known. I'm afraid you're confusing the two."

"Excuse me?" My eyelids shutter rapidly, downright stupefied by her disjointed assertion.

This time, it's her turn to ignore the chance to back down. "You heard me," she maintains.

I wouldn't expect anything less of her, but spirits above, below, and around us, if she could just be a little less _her_ sometimes, I might not have to fight so hard not to strangle her.

I have to force myself to take a deep breath. Focusing on the woman standing in front of me, speaking the foreign words she seems to be speaking, I fight to clear out the intruding images my mind has been trying to mesh into her for months, and to hear only the words she's speaking at this moment. It's not working very well. "If you're trying to make some obscure point, I'm afraid I'm not following."

"Not obscure," she insists. "Just hard. The fact of the matter is that I'm not a saint. I'm human, I'm fallible and I err. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to get over it."

Like hell I will.

"I honestly don't have any idea what you're talking about right now. And I'm not going to let you change the subject. We're talking about you. You and Ransom, and you and Lessing. If you're not capable of sticking to the subject, I don't see how we're going to get anywhere with this."

"You're the one who came here and initiated this conversation, remember?" she needles. "Well, I didn't ask for it, but I'm obliging. The least you can do is to have the guts to face the reason you're so angry with me."

"That's exactly what I'm doing. You're not listening!"

"No. You aren't." She searches my stony confusion, scanning for the acknowledgement I can't give her. "Can you really not see it?" At my clueless shrug of frustration, she gives an exaggerated sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose in a familiar gesture that indicates failed patience with a child, that infuriating way she does sometimes. "This is what happens when you hold someone up on a pedestal, Chakotay. They invariably fail to live up to your image of perfection, and then you're left floundering to find anchor in the stormy seas that follow. I learned that through Ransom, and you learned it through me. It may have hurt, and that's unfortunate, but it's a lesson we both needed to learn. If anything," she straightens too casually, a hand on her lower back for support, "you should probably thank me. You won't make that mistake again."

There are moments that I can't breathe when trying to fathom her reactions. There are moments, just occasionally, when I seriously wonder if she's clinically insane and very good at hiding it most of the time.

"This isn't about pedestals and disappointed expectations anymore than it was about the regulations and logs you kept throwing in my face," I try so desperately to argue calmly. "It's about right and wrong, just like it was in the beginning. And the way you treated me was wrong. Almost killing Noah Lessing was _wrong_. I thought you saw that in the end, but if you can't, I'm not sure I can continue serving under you."

Her chin comes up sharply, glittering blue eyes assessing him with keener attention than I've received since the moment I got here, and that's saying something significant. "We're back to that idle threat again?" The razor edge of her words slices sharply through the cold air between us, but none cut as sharply as, "Mutiny?"

Speechless, I blink against the casually flung obscenity we avoided using even in the thick of this mess so many months ago.

There's no dirtier word aboard a starship; there's no lower blow she could have struck.

When I'm recovered enough to form some coherent thought, some of the edge of her words has sharpened my own. "I was talking about resignation, but thanks for the vote of confidence." The steady, accusing silence calling me a liar is even more hurtful. Fortunately, I'm still numb from the first blow. The numbness lets me continue. "I'm still talking about it, because you refuse to have an honest discussion with me about what you did in that cargo bay."

"You want honest? Serious?" She's on the verge of raising her voice as she hisses, "Fine. My honest and serious belief is that Lessing would have broken. The minute he saw the first fissure open, he would've been screaming for us to reshield the section and deep down, I think you know it, too."

"Maybe he would have." My estimation of Noah's breaking point might have been the same as hers once I saw the look in his eyes just before I closed the opening fissure, but it made no difference then, and it makes no difference whatsoever now. "It's a chance you never should have taken!"

"It was a calculated risk, and I took it."

It's the cold certainty in the statement I've heard in many waking moments since hearing it pass so glibly from her lips in her ready room. Hearing it again pushes me closer to the abyss, and we're full on arguing now. "It was a bad call!" Hearing my words ring in my ears lets me mute my next statement, bringing my volume down a notch, but it doesn't dim my intensity. "The wrong call," I insist.

"Maybe." She calms somewhat at my correction of volume. Her nod is deep and reflective, but not nearly as stiff as it should be if she's absorbing the full weight of the admission. "Morally, probably. But tactically? I can't tell you that I wouldn't do the exact same thing again, faced with identical circumstances."

"And if our calculations had been just a little off?" I barely feel my feet moving, taking me closer to her, incredulous and refusing to accept that she could be that cold: that reckless with human life. "If the aliens had adapted more quickly than we anticipated? Then what, Kathryn? Did you even consider that?"

I honestly can't believe that she could have. That's what this boils down to in the end, not the confused notion she seems to have about pedestals or expectations.

Typical Kathryn, she doesn't back away from my approach. Even if she probably should. Her right shoulder jerks upward in a half shrug that is downright maddeningly infuriating. "That would have been the risk Noah Lessing ran by refusing to cooperate with us."

"Damn it, Kathryn," I hiss. Incensed by the madness of her cool aversion to truth, I'm catching her by the shoulders to keep her from turning away from me yet again without realizing it. "I don't believe you. I don't believe you believe what you're saying right now!"

I'm not sure what I thought I was doing, or what I want from her anymore. But if I wanted her to recoil, I chose the wrong method. Far from cowed, she absorbs the impact of our bodies coming so close together, my inertia colliding with hers, and she doesn't flinch. "Why not?" she demands, scanning my face with insistence, with eyes that sweep over every facet of my expression and miss no telltale flicker or twitch of admission. "Because you don't want to believe a woman you shouldn't love is capable of making decisions that turn your stomach?"

My stomach drops into his boots. "_What_?" It comes out in a disbelieving hiss because I was dead wrong only a minute ago. Apparently, mutiny wasn't the lowest blow she's willing to throw at me.

Not by half.

"I can't be what you want me to be," she's saying too softly to me now. "Not out here. If I'm sorry for anything, it's that."

Her words seep in slowly, the icy, deliberate intent to hurt shocking through my systems one by one. I can feel my face twisting into some parody of the contortions my clenching stomach makes – and then absolute fury clenches my teeth so hard against each other that pain shoots along my jaws, and it takes physical effort to unclench them enough for coherent speech.

"Don't do that," I warn, a darker undercurrent of threat running below the surface of my words than I've ever used with her before. She's gone lax against me, all of her tactics in her sharp, piercing words, and I have to shift and adjust my grip to keep her pinned, but I sure as hell do. And I'm not letting go of her anytime soon. "Don't you dare."

I won't be manipulated into turning this into a conversation about us.

"Don't what?" There's no resistance to my hold, no indication that she's uncomfortable with our proximity. She has no right to seem so calm, so unaffected by my warning as she drawls, "Don't speak the truth?" Her darkened lashes sweep down to rest against her white cheek bones, her intent gaze landing on my tight mouth. "I understand if you don't want to hear it," she says with devastating softness, a hint of sympathetic honey that sticks to my skin, "but it is the truth, Chakotay."

"It's not," I whisper fiercely, all conscious effort going into keeping my grip on her arms from becoming an angry vice that would leave black imprints on her cold white skin for days to come. "It's a cheap shot and you know it. I accepted our positions a long time ago. I've moved on."

"Have you?"

She leans into me, pressing a body fuller than I'd noticed lately dead against me. If not for my hands on her arms, she'd be as draped against me right now as she is in my cursed dreams.

"I can admit that I want you, Chakotay," she's all but purring tauntingly in my face. "Now tell me that you don't want me. Tell me you moved on years ago, that this," she shifts, and I find an insistent hip rubbing too near the half-hard flesh between my thighs, making me grit my teeth, and shove her centimeters further away from me, "had nothing to do with your sense of betrayal when I had you confined to quarters."

My head is whirling with fury and disbelief. When I came here tonight, I'd known she wouldn't be very receptive to my point of view. But this calculated? This vengeful?

I'm starring in open contempt at the stranger in my grasp pressing herself against me. It reminds me of my dreams, which fills me with an entirely unwarranted sense of shame to top it all off, and all I can think to growl at her is, "Is that what you need to hear?"

It certainly seems to be, from where I'm standing.

She ignores the intimation. "Tell me," she insists, "and it ends here and now. You can resign if you want, and I won't try to stop you. I'll even throw in that apology you're so convinced I owe you."

"Damn it, Kathryn," I snap, pushed to the brink at last, "I never said–"

But i had thought. I may as well have said. And I was wrong. Not about that, but it doesn't matter now, because the cold realization that she's seen through me so easily softens my grip just enough that her mouth has the ability to close the tiny gap between us. Her open mouth is crushing into mine, suffocating the lie I wanted so desperately to tell myself.

She kisses me.

It's not a soft kiss. This is an open taunt, a below the belt jab intended to make me admit the real reason I'm angry with her, the real reason I feel so betrayed. It's both everything I've accused her of being in the heat of anger and everything she's _not_ been through this whole, twisted mess.

It's what she could be, what I could want her to be, what the real her would never be all wrapped up in one, but it's not the brightest tactical move she's ever made, trying to bring that point home to me, because the bottom line is that it's her. Against me.

It's her and it's me and the people we used to be knew better than to ever let this happen.

All the anger and built up hurt pours into the connection, tipping the precarious balance we've maintained between reason and repressed lust, and suddenly, it's clear that coming here tonight was the stupidest thing I've done yet because reason never stood a chance in this room.

Hands are everywhere, gripping, flattening, stroking – zapping thought from both of us. Her shirt is over her head and behind us, somewhere on the floor. My pants gape open, my lips apart and flushing warm breaths against her neck before she pushes me away from her, holding me at arm's length for a brutal moment and I'm straining to hear the husked words emanating from her reddened mouth while she draws my left hand down the front of her pants and deep between her legs, leaving no mistake about her level of desire for me. "Tell me," she dares in the husked hint of breath I've left her.

I can't, damn her. Even if I could, I wouldn't be able to. Triumph blazes in her against a thick backdrop of lust as she realizes it, and I don't even care, as long as she doesn't try to move. She reaches behind her, using the pressure of my mouth against hers to hold herself steady while the fingers of my trapped hand rub at odd angles against her slick, wet heat. It's enough to keep her frantic about the way she removes her bra, which disappears before my free hand closes greedily around her hip, the other snaking a slick trail from between her legs and up to her bared, pale-silk breasts.

It's not the body I'd fantasized about years ago those few months planetside, when fantasizing was safe. Gone are the slender planes and angles I'd so painstakingly exorcised from my brain. There's a disarming, fleshier grip for my hands in her hips, a softer fullness in the bare breasts that had been crushing into my chest not a moment earlier, a curve and weight to them in my hand that belongs here, against me right now. Mindlessly, I bury my mouth in the soft round flesh, kissing and licking a ravenous trail from one achingly hard peak to the other, reveling in the low sounds vibrating in the back of her throat and the small hand that rakes cool nails through the sensitive hairs at the back of my head.

On the last conscious level I can attain before all remaining blood drains out of my neural pathways and pools in my groin, I realize what she's known about me all along. It's not want for that younger woman I've been fighting to stifle so recently; it's raw desire for this one fueling my need, and at least part of my anger. As I roughly divest her of the cloth barriers keeping me from my ultimate goal, I resent the nearly-naked woman in front of me for replacing the one that I'd loved, the one I'd thought of as infallible, incorruptible – the one I followed blindly as half a saint. I am downright furious at her for failing to keep that Kathryn alive. For herself, for me, for all of us.

None of that changes the fact that I still want the hell out of her. The man I was three years ago might have learned to turn off his attraction for the woman she had been, but the man I am today, and the woman she has become, are an entirely different story. She's backed across her dining table, her pants dangling from one leg, and she's guiding my throbbing cock to where it wants so desperately to be.

Under normal circumstances I would wait, and the borderline pain in the pleasure wouldn't be there, and I hate myself even more for it, but this pain of hard and fast and raw is more erotic than soft slowness. It's clear from the slightly sharp nails she usually trims digging into my bare shoulders that waiting isn't what she wants, maybe is never what she wanted as she sits upright on the edge of the table, pulling me closer despite the initial resistance her body offers.

"Now. Here," Kathryn demands, heedless to that resistance, and it cleanses me of any doubt I might have had about continuing.

She wants this. She _started_ this. She wants me, here, now, angry, disillusioned but real – not blind devotion springing from a man with a washboard stomach and rippling pectorals exploding on the advertising image of some idyllic new holo-romance. And it may well come at the cost of some of my self-respect later, but I'm not in any frame of mind to do much more than to oblige her. I drive her own point home to her, letting her have the smaller victory because this is all that matters anymore. At least in this one frantic moment, and those that follow.

She takes all I have, her body jerking back along the surface of the desk from the force of my movements, but my hands on her hips keep her from sliding very far.

"_Bridge to the captain."_

With her thighs clenching compulsively around my waist, it too slowly penetrates that the red alert klaxons sounding around us aren't from the impending climax we've been racing toward for the past frantic minutes.

The word that leaves my lips is one she'd muttered three seconds ago and for an entirely different reason. Dumbfounded, red-faced with exertion and frustration, I watch her scramble to crawl to her shirt and tap her commbadge after shoving me off of her and sliding off of the table I'll never be able to look at the same way again.

"Janeway here." If she sounds breathless and irritated as hell, it should be maskable by the late hour and having presumably just awoken to a startling comm. call.

"_Sorry to wake you, Captain, but we're reading some unidentified distortions in the surrounding space," _Harry is claiming._ "Engineering is reporting we've got a massive buildup of core pressure but we can't identify a cause."_

This is a joke. Paris is behind this. He has to be. My entire soul leaks out of my pores in a flood of disbelief. They've got to be kidding. Now? _Right_ now? I'm numbly watching her expression, which is closing in on murderous by the second. "What's the reading?" she growls, and I can't look away from the gleaming white curve of her backside just yet.

"_43,000 kilopascals and climbing," _Harry Kim reports tersely, and every word deflates the raging erection I'd been trying to extinguish through entirely more pleasurable means before the good Ensign interrupted us.

She exchanges a hard glance with me, and even through everything, I think I know what she's thinking, aside from an entire list of obscenities that are running through both our minds. The number's not critical, but if it continues climbing…

"Is it still rising?" she asks curtly.

"_Yes, ma'am. 44,200. The distortions outside the ship seem to be increasing with each rise."_

That's it. Our last hope of maintaining this mood, much less finishing what we'd started, is crushed under seven hundred kilopascals of warp core pressure.

"Shields," she snaps. "All stop. Check that the sensors are functioning properly. Have B'Elanna report the minute she gets to Engineering. I'll be up in two minutes." She's already half dressed, one leg into the crumpled pants she's had to search to find. "I have to go," she tells me as the comm. line falls inactive.

I didn't need to be told that while I fumble to collect my scattered clothing, the shock of the intrusion into a heated moment fully deflating what had been a painfully hard erection only a minute ago. I feel her eyes fall away from my bared body, wonder if the ship had actually been rocking and we'd failed to notice, and I grit out, "I should come too."

I pretend not to see the way she stiffens, even hunched over to pull on her shirt, and reality reasserts itself with a vengeance.

It doesn't change certain hard facts. Whether or not she wants to admit it, it's true. My place, until she relieves me of it or I resign, is still on the bridge, beside her. She doesn't argue. It takes me less time to dress than her, my clothes being closer together, and I'm ready by the time she is, but we leave the room in absolute silence. Neither of us able to look the other in the eye anymore.

It's an awkward ride to the bridge.


	3. Chapter 3

If I thought my dreams were bad before, I was a deluded fool. Now, scattered somewhere between unseen attacking aliens, her brushing by me and Lessing's face, I've got real erotic images of the woman I'm supposed to be serving as an objective executive officer bleeding into the edges of my awareness. All the time.

How I thought this would solve anything remains beyond me. How she thought it might, I can't even guess. For the first time in a long time, I have a concrete reason to be angry with her – one I'm aware of and can point to as unequivocally wrong on her part. She had no right to take that discussion where she took it, no matter how defensive my approach had made her. Touching me at all in that way, was out of line. But I won't tell her that. Unless she pushes me.

We should have stopped long before we were interrupted; it should never have gone that far. But it did. And now we've made a mess of the last thing we had going for us. The friendship I was so misguidedly trying to save by walking into her quarters that night.

The warp core/distortion incident was a false alarm. Of sorts. A very long, involved process that took hours to sort out, but a false alarm it ultimately was. Discounting the near ejection of the core, that is.

The subspace distortions were, as Kathryn suspected, wreaking havoc with the internal sensors. The core pressure was rising in response to false external readings and once we figured it out, we barely managed to avoid ejecting the super-pressurized core. Several long hours served to bury our awkward emotions under a thick layer of exhaustion. By the end of the emergency that didn't happen, I'd finally drifted to my quarters and she'd left in the direction of her ready room, probably to file a report on the threat that wasn't. But mostly to avoid leaving at the same time as me. My dreams were a hellish blur of Kathryn in front of me on a table, low, primal encouragement vibrating in her throat, then of Noah's fearful eyes and Maquis battles. I caught a glimpse of my guide loping somewhere on the periphery, but what that means is more than I can fathom.

There's work to do.

The day is fairly typical. Cleaning up after near catastrophe: the Delta Quadrant usual. It's easy enough to do my job without needing to fully pay attention to it until the haze of routine is broken by almost walking right into Lessing on my way to the mess hall. Being so deep in my own head, if I didn't catch his reflection in the glossy interface panel ahead of me and beside him, I'd bowl him over, but that isn't what sticks with me; it's _what_ I see in his warped reflection that stops me dead in motion. It's coincidence, nothing more, but my eyes show me small blocks of blue lining the outside edge of his left eye, and the blocks resemble the scaly facial markers of a Cardassian. Half a gnawing revelation claws at my awareness, trying to be recognized, but shock of imagery keeps the realization from forming.

"Commander." Noah's voice has the kind of soft tones that can both soothe or instill kernels of his own panic in his listening audience. I note it from somewhere very dim while waiting for the blood to return to my head. He's rounded the corridor and stands in front of me, concerned by the lack of color in my face, if I had to guess. "Everything all right?"

I almost laugh in his face. _All_ _right? No, Noah. Not by a long shot._ "I'm fine crewman." Swallowing gives me away, and so does dipping my head, but there's a connection between us that makes me afraid, however steeped in paranoia the fear might be, to look him too deeply in the eyes until I'm recovered. Fortunately, I've had practice hiding my reactions lately, most notably at Kathryn's hands, and I look up again within a reasonable allotment of time. "How are those calibrations coming?"

Disconnecting the warp core from the main power source, as we'd had to do last night, requires a hell of a lot more reintegration to undo than it should, as B'Elanna and Kathryn are both growling under their breath this morning. They're right, but in this particular moment, I'm grateful for that lack of simplicity because it's an easy deflection.

Routine, real emergencies crop up shortly, giving us all an excuse to duck our heads and steer in the opposite direction of one another. Kathryn and I both take full advantage of that. I try gathering my thoughts for the eventual discussion, but the time to do it just isn't there. I find myself unsure of my position, and it's disconcerting. The ever-present tension straining the air between us is only getting worse, and I know I have to pull myself together and approach her soon, whether I'm fully prepared to explain my position and hear the explanation for hers or not, but she beats me to it. The week long avoidant behavior finally ends with her summoning me to the ready room at the end of our shift.

I could try stalling for time. If I tell her I'm not ready, she'll have to give me space until I am. But I'm not sure if time would be of any help here, and neither of us can argue that going on like this is an option.

I make sure the beady blue eyes tracking me from the helm detect no fodder for gossip when I stride into the lion's den, keeping my head at a casual angle of descent. Not that he'll need any help. Paris's imagination continues to astound everyone who's experienced it firsthand.

Once sealed in the room, with her on the other side of it and no distractions to hide behind, I'm less brave. Fleetingly, I wish she didn't look so damned good this evening. Somehow, starship lighting is as flattering on her as I'd found open daylight to be several years ago.

Eye contact is difficult, and without distraction, I'm not exactly sure it's safe. We manage it somehow, which is a good first step. Or so I tell myself. Again, we go through the motions of her asking if I'd like anything and me declining. Then, on some unspoken instinct, I change my mind and opt to replicate myself a spiced tea, just to have something to do with my hands if I need to. Out of habit, I order her a fresh coffee without asking, a preemptive peace offering of sorts, and set it down in front of her. Her small smile doesn't quite reach her eyes, but that could mean one of a hundred different things.

At her silent indication, I take the uncomfortable seat in front of her desk, trying to prepare my scattered thoughts, but she props her chin in one hand and she saves me the trouble.

"My father was a good man. I don't think I've talked much about him to you."

"No," I say slowly, "you haven't."

Why she's doing so now, of all times and places, I can't fathom, but the question makes me think. What do we really know about each other's fathers?

She knows my father was killed by Cardassians. She knows that afterward, I rejected an institution I felt had betrayed him, took a tribal mark and a whole culture's spirituality on for him. I know hers was an admiral she loved enough to be rocked to the core when aliens impersonated him, and I sometimes suspect that she holds the weight of an entire bureaucracy on her shoulders at least partly for him. But talk about our fathers, aside from one or two lines here and an anecdotal reference to childhood there?

Rarely, if ever.

"He wasn't much for lecturing, but I learned from his actions," she's explaining by the time I switch off these thoughts and catch up to her words. "Watching him taught me most of what I know about being a responsible person. In many respects, he was the best man I've ever known."

"But?" I don't have to be a telepath to sense something heavier lingering on the horizon.

The cringe is faintly visible, her eyelids closing for one more second than a blink requires before she quietly confesses, "He never once apologized over anything important."

I have an inkling now of why this was her opening gambit.

"Missed birthdays, school ceremonies, a few promotions, dinners," she ticks off a list with the soft drum of her right fingers against her polished desk. "I wouldn't even have noticed it, but it bothered the hell out of my sister, you see." Her sister, I know mostly by individual quirks and how much each of these bother Kathryn. Few others put that particular wry note in her words as she explains, "When I began to pay attention, much as it pained me, I had to admit that she was right. He never did. He gave them over the little things, inconsequential accidents, but never the bigger mistakes. It was…unsettling, but I let it slide. It wasn't my place to police his apologies. Or so I assured my sister."

She pauses to let me interrupt her if I'm so inclined, but I'm not – at least not yet – and she goes on.

"Finally, when I was twenty, he did something inexcusable. This time to my mother." I can't say why she needs the deeper breath here, but she has my full attention when she draws it. "He missed an anniversary party my mother had planned for months in favor of extending a voluntary away mission."

"I assume there was a good reason?" I say, because I can't imagine that there wouldn't be.

A sharp shake of her head and a deeper frown than I'm used to seeing from her are her response.

"No," she says softly. "That time, there was no excuse. She'd worked too hard for that party, and he'd known about it for too long to miss it like that with no communication. He left her standing there, dressed to the nines, surrounded by an entire army of friends and family, and he…" the distant shake of her head tells him she still can't quite believe what he'd done, "he never so much as called to warn her that he wouldn't be there."

"He never showed? At all?" I'm trying to imagine what would have happened if my father had ever been so callous over something important to my mother, and I find that I can't. It just wouldn't have happened in my household.

Again, her head shakes in the negative. "He came home late that night, long after she'd sent everyone home. I never told anyone, but I'd heard her crying in bed, when she thought no one could hear her. My mother rarely cries, but he had the power to do that to her, and he didn't even seem to care. He saw the party decorations everywhere; he even tripped on one of the low streamers if I heard correctly down the hall. He knew the moment he came home what he'd forgotten. I listened at my bedroom door as he went straight up to bed, sure he was going to apologize, and all I heard in there was silence. She didn't even confront him, Chakotay. She was that used to it."

Even now, I can see how much that pained her, and I can't say I blame her. It also tells me exactly how she responded: it would have been the way she has always responded when someone can't or won't defend themselves. I shift in the less-than-comfortable chair, leaning forward, predicting: "You confronted him."

I get a half smile for accuracy. "You have to understand how rarely I've ever done that. Usually, I sided with him in any argument between the two of them because, for some reason, it was easier for me to see his side."

Spirits of my ancestors, how easy that is to imagine, knowing her and knowing what little of her father that I do. "But not that time."

"I cornered him over breakfast the next morning, spitting mad, and demanded to know why the words 'I'm sorry' were so rarely in his vocabulary. His answer surprised me."

Her eye contact is steady, her pause heavy but brief.

"He said it was because, when you're truly sorry for something you've done, words aren't enough to convey that. 'The way you show remorse is by action', he said," and I can hear what must have been her father's low inflections by the way hers change as she quotes him. "'By never doing it again, among other things'. I've never forgotten that, Chakotay, and I still believe it's true."

Intensity shines in her familiar eyes that look grey this morning behind her metal desk as understanding dawns. It's perspective, at least, for some of her inexplicable behavior.

"I can appreciate the sentiment," I allow. "And I'm glad you shared the story with me." I am, and that's something, I guess. "But there's something to be said for the value of going through the motions. You can't have gotten where you are today and not understand that. Sometimes, words have value only because they've been spoken."

Words like "I'm sorry", for instance. Words like "I need you and value your judgment".

She looks directly into my face, still making solid eye contact, which is surprising, considering her next words. "I can admit it was wrong to take the chance on Noah Lessing. But I can't apologize for relieving you of duty."

Accepting her opening position, I blow on the steaming tea in my mug, taking a moment to center myself before responding. I look up at her. "You took it too far," I say quietly. "My job is to safeguard this crew, and you. That includes your emotional health. I was doing my job that day."

"And I was doing mine," she levelly insists. "I confined you to quarters for outright stating you intended to disobey the next order I gave that you disagreed with."

"That's not what I said," I interject, and she shrugs tightly.

"I assure you, it's what I heard."

Because it's what she wanted to hear, most likely. I'll wait to argue that point, mostly because it's clear she has a point to make first as she continues.

"I'm sure you can understand that I can't have insubordination among my senior staff in the middle of a conflict, let alone from my executive officer – if anyone on this ship understands that, it should be you. And you can't be afraid to stand up to me, _respectfully_, when you think I'm crossing that line. If there's anyone on this ship who understands that about your position, it should be me."

"Those are a lot of shoulds," I muse warily. "All good ones."

"Well, here's a must. Our communication has to be better than it's been in our few disagreements. There's no room for it in our positions."

"Agreed." On the last point, anyway. I wait a few beats before feeling we're in a place where we can broach the next topic. "Can we talk about Ransom now?"

Her grin is wry and unflinching. "You mean is it safe to have a conversation without tearing each other's heads – or clothes – off?"

With steady bravado I have to work to achieve, I nod gamely. "Yes."

When her eyes drop to the monitor beside her, I know she's gearing up for brutal honesty. I'm almost ready when her candid gaze lifts to mine. "You were right," she opens, and I resist the urge to ask her to repeat that phrase so I can record it for posterity in favor of tentative peace and allowing her to go on. "In large part, it was the fact that he was human that galled me. I never denied that. What I didn't have the chance to explain–"

"What you were too pissed off at me to condescend to explain," I correct, unable to restrain myself a second time.

Her brow arches imperiously. It's not my fault that I remember how, half naked, that same subtle movement is an entirely different kind of impressive, but I shove that thought out of mind because it's thoughts like those that we've got to avoid in this mess we've created as she furthers, "What I decided there wasn't time to explain to you in your closed state of mind was that, his humanity aside, Rudy Ransom was a member of Starfleet, and he was gallivanting around this quadrant torturing and killing innocent life forms all in the name of getting back home to Earth. Did you stop to think what that meant for us, traveling behind him?"

It's not what I expected to hear, and it gives me physical pause. Had I? The answer is uneasily surprising and I rub at my chin trying to digest it. "I hadn't gotten that far, no. I was focused on _your_ focus on stopping him at any cost."

"So I noticed." I let her have the caustic lilt of the observation. "All we have is our name and the principles of the organization we represent. We've made enough enemies out here just trying to hold to them. It's already a struggle to form alliances when aliens like the Hirogen get somewhere ahead of us. Letting the Equinox continue to hunt those creatures all the way back to the Alpha Quadrant, all in the name of Starfleet and the Federation, would only have made it that much harder on us. No one was going to stop to make the distinction between us and them, and I couldn't afford to have Voyager paying for his inhumanity for one more light year. It was imperative that we rejected their actions, publically and immediately. Do you understand?"

I think so, yes. It doesn't stop her from elaborating to be sure.

"What if those aliens he'd been abusing for so many light years had allies ahead? Someone even more powerful than they were, who wasn't in the frame of mind to stop and distinguish between us and the Equinox? In the state we were in, we wouldn't have survived another major confrontation."

I'm not so sure if she means the state of the ship or the state of our communication, but either could have been deadly. Hypothetical or not, I'm forced to agree with this logic. "It's a better justification than the one you used when we were discussing it." Which had been, namely, not much of one. I eye her closely. "Was that really a factor in your insistence that we catch him right away?"

"Not as big of one as it should have been, but it was a factor." Her eyes catch on the mug at her right hand but she makes no move to reach for it as she admits low, "Somewhere in there, it was."

Somewhere very deep, maybe. I'll let her decide how deep that was.

And now the hard part. Of this part of the conversation, anyway. "And confining me to quarters? Relieving me of duty? Is there an explanation for that I haven't considered?"

Is it possible she has an excuse for disregarding me that isn't going to ring as bitter as those I've conjured on my own?

"If you'll recall, I'd already stood down. That in itself was difficult, but I did it."

"It didn't exactly seem that way from where I was standing. You brushed past me," it's all I've seen for months, and the coldness in her eyes is something that will live with me for the rest of my days, "and I could feel your anger like it was a real, living thing. It scared me."

There's more in that wording than I'd ever intended to come out. Slowly it washes over me.

"But I left," she insists. "I could have ordered you to stand aside. I could have drawn my weapon on you to stop you from going in after him, but I didn't. I took your point. Once I had a few minutes to cool down, I even decided to try things your way because I saw that you had a point about my methods and Voyager's immediate survival. No matter how much I hated hearing it, I could see the possibility that I was erring on the side of reckless."

If she had admitted even one ounce of this to me at the time. If she'd been able to shove her damned pride aside for the three seconds it would have taken… I can't help that retroactive frustration rules my response. "You have a hell of a way of showing it, Kathryn. All I got from you was cold silence when I told you what I planned to tell the crew about our next move."

"That's just it, Chakotay." She leans forward, driving her point home. "You _told_ me."

"I didn't…" A hitch of hollowness rings in my heart at the words my lips want to form, and I stop, considering what I remember of that short conversation. And I have to regroup, to my chagrin. "I guess I did. It wasn't meant that way," it was probably almost half meant that way, "but I can see how that's what came out."

"And I still let you do it. I kept my mouth shut while you proposed your plan instead of ordering an immediate search for Ransom, as you knew I'd intended. Even at that point, I understood your position. Obviously, I respected it – and you – enough to back down."

It filters through my disjointed memories, events and motivations falling into place. She hadn't interfered with the meeting. That much is true and I have to admit it. "And then?" I ask. "What happened to your resolve to listen to reason?" For the life of me, I can't figure it out. "One minute we were standing there, discussing my plan, and the next…"

"And the next you were standing there, centimeters from my face, telling me that you had every intention of openly opposing me again whenever you felt I'd crossed that line – which I took to mean whenever you didn't agree with what I was going to do next. Coming on the heels of a huge concession on my part, it was difficult to swallow."

Frowning is instinctual more than conscious. "I really don't think I said anything out of line in there."

"'I'm warning you'?" she drawls. "'I won't let you cross that line again'? Sound familiar?"

Hearing them with that inflection, which isn't the one I'd heard myself use but one I can imagine her having heard, I guess I can understand that. "All right. There were better ways to phrase it. I can admit that much. I just…"

"Couldn't stand seeing that side of me. Didn't want to believe it existed at all. I understand. If I had been in a better place, I probably would have turned the other cheek and ignored you."

"But you weren't in that place."

It's so much easier to see it now with some distance between us and the events that had swirled out of control so quickly. A changed word here, a kinder inflection there from either one of us, and things might not have gone so far. She might not have gone so far.

"No," she frankly admits, "I wasn't. Instead, I let your sanctimonious, holier-than-thou speech," she ignores the tilt of my head, "goad me into relieving you of duty instead of standing there and continuing to converse with you like two civilized commanding officers of a starship."

And that is what this boils down to, in the end. Our failure to do that. Our failure to maintain an open, objective line of communication between each other.

"We were both at fault in that room," I can finally admit. "In that situation, I could have taken more care with my words."

"I interpreted your warning as a threat of imminent insubordination." She doesn't back down from her position, and I can't say that I expect her to.

"I was trying to get through to you. If you'd seen the look on your face, you'd have understood why I was so adamant that you heard my point."

"You'd already gotten through to me. Less than an hour before, when you disobeyed a direct order to stand down."

"I did what I felt I had to do. I'm not sure how else I can say it."

This is a point that's not so easy to give on, because that is the truth. I can't say that I believe I did anything wrong by opposing her, considering the reception I was getting in that awful moment.

"Maybe." Her nod is slow and considering. "At the time, you and I and Lessing were the only ones who knew you'd disobeyed me once by going back for him. I couldn't take the chance of a repeat performance in front of other members of the crew, and I used that as justification to isolate you from them – and me – until I felt like dealing with you."

"You used it as carte blanche to continue hunting Ransom," I accuse. From my perspective, that's the long and short of what happened. I'm surprised to see her index finger tick slowly back and forth at me.

"Not exactly," she argues. "I still carried out your idea to meet with the Ankari. Maybe I didn't do it the way you would have done it, but in my own way, I followed your suggestion. I still listened and heard your point."

"It sure as hell didn't seem that way from my perspective, locked in my quarters."

Like my statement, her heavy sigh has the weight of more than one bitter argument behind it. "Just because I don't always agree with your delivery doesn't mean I'm not hearing your message, Chakotay. I fail to recall a time when I've ever ignored you completely when you felt strongly about something."

I have to sit with the last for a long time. My fingers toying with the side of my cooling mug as I look at her. So she isn't as oblivious as she seems much of the time. She knows exactly where the root of this frustration lies, deep within me. In some ways, it's an immense relief to hear her vocalize what I haven't been able to, and in other ways… In others it's almost worse. I don't know how I feel about her having known how I felt and failing to address it. But then, that's not exactly her job, to bring up concerns I myself haven't voiced.

There's one thing I can say about it, until I have longer to process it, at least. "I'm glad I know you're aware of the way I perceive your responses sometimes." She waits, giving me time with it. After a moment, I'm ready to admit, "You're right about why I was so bothered by this. At least in part. It scared the hell out of me that you were capable of murder – even under those circumstances. I'm sorry to say it, but, deep down, it made me afraid that you could turn into something like Ransom one day."

The barest wave of some emotion I can't identify rolls through her expression before it clears, but there's a raspy remnant of that feeling in her voice when she says, "I'd be lying if I said I didn't scare the hell out of myself for the same reason, looking back on it."

Good. At least she's thinking about how close to that line she came.

"But it was more than that, Kathryn," I find myself urging, unsure of where the words are coming from. "It's not just that I didn't want to believe you were capable of it, because of how I felt…feel," I don't know which word applies to this particular revelation right now, "about you. It's more, but it does date back to the beginning years of our journey."

"Go on," she encourages, and I needed that encouragement I find once I have it.

"I think the reason I was able to follow you early on is because, subconsciously, you showed me what Starfleet is supposed to be. In you, I saw what I could have been, if I'd made different choices. I'll never regret joining the Maquis, but when I did, my life took a different path from yours. In some ways – a lot of ways – not for the better." She's listening intently to me, but I find myself as focused on my own words as she is. Because it's only now, formulating them aloud, that so many things in my dreams and actions make any kind of sense to me. "I was determined when I joined you, that I was going to make sure you never deviated from your path and strayed into mine. You were showing me the way back to peace, Kathryn. Part of why I fell in love with you had to do with that, and I swore to myself those first few weeks that I was never going to let you stray away from that path. We both failed in that five months ago."

The moisture in her eyes is reflecting the truest blue I've ever seen. "You didn't–"

"Part of why I haven't been able to let it go, despite how hard I've tried, is that I've seen the look you gave me outside the cargo bay before," I continue over her, because I have to get this out of me. She has to hear me say this if I'm going to be sure she understands.

"Where?" she asks, her voice half a rasp of trepidation.

"In the mirror." So many times. I just never saw it for what it was all those years ago. It's now, saying it aloud, that I understand the connection myself.

I realize only now while I'm looking at her that, in so many ways, she's a mirror of paths my life has taken. And she may have taken some sideways aggression lately because of it. Not without reason, though. I'm determined to make her understand why.

"I'm glad you didn't see Lessing's eyes when I went back in there for him," I tell her. "Because I've also seen the look of fear in his eyes before – in the faces of countless Cardassians I've murdered with my bare hands. Believe me, Kathryn," I'm begging of her now, "those aren't burdens you want to carry around on your shoulders. Added to the ones you're already carrying out here, it will crush you."

And us along with it.

"I've seen the look before," she says softly, by all appearances stricken by the admission, and my insides are seething icy snakes at this notion. "In Tuvix. When I…" She chokes on the words, her throat closing on them in a desperate attempt to keep them inside of her.

And those are the burdens I'm talking about. "No," I promise intently, leaning forward to drive it home to her, "that wasn't the same. I'm not making light of what you had to do that day, because it's a choice no one should ever have to make, but it wasn't made in anger. You did that because no one else could and because there were two other lives hanging in the balance. Carry whatever guilt you have to about it, because that's what makes you human and I'd never try to take that away from you. But there's a difference there, Kathryn. Never tell yourself that there isn't."

"I…think I understand," she's barely able to say. She's referring to all of it, I guess. But the burdens from the past have carried over in her, more than I'd even suspected. It's clear as natural daylight now that I'm looking at her. It's not just me that's been running from a past that can't be outrun anymore.

Her, we can work on. There's more to do with all of it. But not today.

Some admissions are too heavy to sit under for long. The psychological need to clear the room is strong and I give in to it.

"You're right about Lessing," I blurt out, our mutual awareness giving me both renewed courage and reason to forge onward.

That stirs her interest. She shifts in her chair, regaining the slightest bit of posture she'd conceded under heavier topics. "Oh?"

I almost smile at how responsive she is to being told she's right. "Going back to your point earlier about first impressions and trust. All he really knows about you is what happened between the three of us in the cargo bay. There's nothing you can say to him that he's going to trust for a long time. It's better to let him settle in and see what kind of leader you are with his own eyes. For now, all we know about them is that once you gain their loyalty, they'll follow even the most flawed leaders into death."

"A good quality to have, if it's channeled properly." I've only ever seen her hand smooth across the green metal edge of her desk that way when she's deep in thought. "Sometimes I wonder if you know how much I value what merging our two crews has taught me. If the Maquis taught me anything, it's that loyalty doesn't come automatically with rank. It comes with time and experience. They have to gain our trust, and we have to gain their loyalty."

We. She means her.

"I'll still need your help with them. Until I have time to separate my anger with what they've done, it's probably best that I don't interact with them. I've been leaving it to you to get to know them and assess their integration."

Information that would have been far more useful to me months ago. Not that I'd needed to be told to do it, but that she'd even cared to acknowledge their presence on her ship long enough to decide to let me handle it might have made a difference in my assessment of her motives. It might have made a difference in how I'd approached her one week ago.

Just possibly, it might have saved me months of torture I can't even broach to her until we're in a much better place.

"Learn them for me," she formally asks for the first time, redrawing my fractured attention. "Get to know their strengths and weaknesses. Form an opinion on whether or not they can be fully integrated or if we'll have to watch them every moment that they're aboard this ship."

That I can do. What it means to hear her say the words is something I won't dismiss easily, and it will make the task one I resent far less. "I won't let you down," I promise her. And I mean in regard to far more than the Equinox Five.

"I know." Her fingers trace a pattern that doesn't exist anywhere but in her mind on the smooth, uniformed finish of her desk. "I shouldn't have kissed you."

Here we go. Nothing like having warning before being tossed into the middle of a dark, seething ocean. I swallow, bracing myself for the waves of awkward dancing that are going to ensure. "I'm glad you did."

"If it comes to that, so am I. But I had no right to do that just to prove a point. I was angry with you. So angry, Chakotay."

"You didn't want to hear what I had to say."

"That's putting it mildly."

Why that damned half smile of hers, when rueful, disarms me of any weapons I'm ever carrying I may never know, but it does. Every time.

"And what happened afterward…the awkwardness of this past week…that was entirely my fault."

I'm going to let her have that one without argument. "I think that's the closest you've come to an apology all week," I note, to which I receive only a level stare and silence.

All right, too soon. Fine. I can respect that.

I take a breath, exhaling slowly and gathering the courage to stab deeper into the core of that which we've been avoiding. "This won't work, Kathryn." It's the first time I've admitted it fully to myself, and after the exhausting revelations of earlier, it comes as an unpleasant jolt of realism I could have done without hearing.

By the flicker of her eyes, she knows which "this" I mean. What shocks me is the lack of open relief I'd unconsciously expected to see. Then again, I only have history to base my expectations on, after all.

"Maybe it could." She shifts in her chair to sit up more fully, surveying me intently, thoughtfully as she considers us. "Maybe it would. At least…I think that it could, if we were determined enough to make it work." I'm not ready for the panic her unexpected candor inspires as she continues, "But in my estimation of how we're going so far, can we take the chance that it won't? Could we live with ourselves if something between us caused me or you to make a bad decision in a crucial moment?"

She's actually asking me. It's a real, valid question, and she wants to know my thoughts on the subject. Which means that she may be leaning to one side of the balance, but, atypically, she hasn't already made the decision. I'm not sure why it throws me so damned much, aside from the fact that it's the last thing I expected to face when we finally had this conversation.

I wasn't expecting my opinion to matter, or even to have to voice it at all. Where to place the blame for my low expectations of my input in her decisions, even when I'm involved in the question, is something to examine more fully some other time.

I smooth hair back from the edge of my forehead with a heavy sigh. "I can't, no." I don't believe that she can live with it, either. "Before I knew what she was, I broke things off with Seska when we came to Voyager because I know myself. I know what I can handle separating emotionally, and I didn't believe that kind of tension belongs in a command structure." Watching her blink suggests my answer is other than she expected, but that she is hearing and absorbing it, at least. "If I didn't think I could handle a full-blown relationship with her and keep it professional, I'm not sure that I can make it work with you. Right now, I'm finding it harder to ignore that than I have in the past."

The pause I insert is difficult, but I want her to have a chance to respond if she disagrees. She waits, uninclined to comment, so I keep talking.

"Right now, we can hardly seem to balance a friendship and command of this crew. If the Equinox showed anything, it's that. If we start trying to bring this," I gesture vaguely along the space between them, "into the equation with even our friendship in this level of disrepair…" I have to shake my head at the Pandora's box we may well have opened for ourselves, and I can't resist adding ruefully, "We'd probably have been better off trying to work this out in a boxing ring than in the bedroom."

Not that we'd made it anywhere close to the bedroom.

"Well." Her half grin betrays how closely aligned her thoughts are with mine as she smirks, "I don't know about that. Let's just say we both woke up a better kind of sore the next morning than we would have if we'd tried that route."

I clears my throat. Smile thinly. "I would have taken it easy on you."

"That would have been foolish, Commander. I always play to win."

That she does. That, unequivocally, she does. And if she can't, more often than not, she doesn't play.

"Friends?"

Whatever else I've thought or not thought about her this past week, I'm not going to let her wonder about my commitment to that much. "It has to start there," I agree.

There it is. Something I haven't seen in far too many months now. A real, genuine smile from her that's directed only at me. One that lights all the way to her eyes. For an instant, it slows the gritty details of my day to a grinding halt, and I absorb the entire moment with an inexplicable sense of relief washing over my soul.

"Then, as a friend, can I invite you to dinner in my quarters tomorrow? Say, 2100?"

I hesitate, playing with my earlobe for grounding as reality reasserts itself.

Her eyes narrow, catching it. "What?" she demands, and a delicate cough escapes me.

"I think the mess hall would be better," I choke out. "At least for the next few weeks."

"You're thinking the crew should see us rebuilding our friendship." She nods approvingly. "Excellent point."

"That," I agree but don't agree, "and I'm not sure how trustworthy I find myself with you in a closed space off-duty for a little while."

Trying to deny how delighted I am by the full grin that tells me how much that particular prospect delights her, I almost miss her teasing, "Afraid I'll attack you again?"

"Afraid one of us will." _You have no idea what I see in my dreams_, _Kathryn_, I want to say but can't. I do know it's not some willow-thin woman with long hair trailing all the way down her back and that somehow makes everything harder that it had been before. Swallowing hardly lubricates my throat while waiting for her response, which is nonverbal. I watch her shoulders rise and fall with the force of a deep breath, noting the finality settling over her posture and expression.

She stands, and so do I. I watch her circle the desk they way I've seen her do a thousand times as she moves to exit the ready room via the bridge doors. Something internal flutters in my gut. Then it has control of my muscles and it spurs me into spontaneous motion.

"Hey." I block her path with my body, standing still until I'm sure I've got her attention. Later, I'll examine the thrill I get out of the hint of uncertainty in her gaze. For now, I'd only wanted her to know, "Don't mistake my feeling that we have to repair what we had before trying something more for apathy. I'm not giving up on this. Not completely. We're just…putting it in stasis for a while. Seeing what develops."

The return of her slow, easy grin is as bracing as it is promising. "As I recall, stasis is where all of this started, Commander."

It takes a moment for the reference to place. By the time it does, she's moving past me, her shoulder brushing against my chest so very softly. For the first time in a while, it doesn't shock me stiff, either.

I smile at her back, stepping aside and letting the statement stand as she precedes me out onto the bridge, but she's wrong, actually. "All this" started well before that. This is a journey we've been walking from the moment we first locked eyes as leaders on opposite sides of a bloody moral line. And unless I'm mistaken, the end of this winding path we're on isn't yet anywhere in sight.

I meet Tom Paris's furtive glance with a level stare, and the helmsman swivels back to face the viewscreen, unable to read me. It lends an added sense of satisfaction while Kathryn gives the order to continue heading into an unfamiliar part of space we haven't yet mapped out. And as I take my seat on Kathryn's left side, for the first time in a long while, I don't mind that I can't see the road ahead of us.

I'm content with knowing, deep down, where it ultimately leads.


End file.
